Editorial

11:51 PM on 9/21/2010 by Katrina Pawlowski

How important is DLC to you, really? Are you one of the types of gamers that's content with just playing part of a game, then moving on to something else? If so, the concept of stand-alone DLC may interest you considerably. I ask: Will Dead Rising 2's DLC help their sales, or satisfy gamers somehow?

Recently on the downloadable front, Dead Rising 2 gave us a taste of the future release game with a bit of prequel DLC. This DLC does not require the full game to play, and is not just a demo showing off a pre-build of the game. It gives players a whole new chapter in the Dead Rising 2 realm, and a little bit of back story before the games release.

Unfortunately for a co-op game, the DLC was not co-op - but what if games, co-op and single player, started doing this regularly? Would we experience the origins of Dom and Marcus before the war came to such desperate battle? Is there a chance we could fire up Fable 2 and play as the little girls for longer - or even as the main villain before you discover he’s not so nice?

possibilities of getting gamers interested in the full game with more than just a demo is staggering - and I suppose we will see how well it works once Dead Rising 2 (complete with co-op) drops in a week or so. If Case Zero worked, more gamers will be interested - but either way the developer was able to reach out to more gamers with the little snippet of DLC ahead of time.

What game do you think deserves its own stand-alone DLC? Not just an add-on, but a chapter of a full game, or something to that effect?

New in Download and DLC:

Since the last issue of On the Download we’ve experienced a bit of PAX 2010. With that, comes quite a few new titles to show off, including a bit of DLC flavor. First off an announcement directly related to our Dead Rising 2 news, as Frank West (protagonist of the first game) joins forces with Chuck Greene in a DLC pack titled Case West. The best thing about this particular DLC? Both Frank and Chuck are playable co-op style - the one thing that was missing from Case Zero.

On the arcade front, PSN is getting a bit squishy with their co-op in the downloadable platforming co-op title About a Blob. While PSN is gettin’ busy with blobs, XBLA and Steam will be knee-deep in Alien Breed 2. This just sounds like the most disgustingly awesome party of all time. Okay, so maybe they should be played separately.

Just a bit of a heads up for those that loved the original, Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue is out, like, tomorrow. Hopefully the co-op is more worth-while, but I’m ready to dig in either way.

There was a lot more DLC/Downloadable news this past 4 weeks - it’s just too much for me to post here this time. If you’re not following our feeds, DO IT! Then you won’t miss a thing.

Free For You:

Our Free for You segment this week is a blast from the past as I recommend you play the free trial of Contra classic arcade game on XBLA. This trial will give players access to two-player shared screen co-op, but I don’t think our good old 30 lives code works any longer. I’d love to know if it does, so if someone wouldn’t mind: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Select, Start.

Author

Katrina Pawlowski
Former Editor

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